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PS3 Not as Difficult to Develop For as Reported? |
Listed in: Interviews, News Tags: interviews, ps3 news
The Guardian has had to chance to talk to PS3 developers and get the scoop first hand about PS3 programming difficulties that have been reported. Here is an excerpt from the article:
First of all, as with Killzone developer Guerrilla in a recent online Q&A sesh, they were happy to point out that PS3 is not as complicated to write for as we've all been led to believe. Apparently, the machine's use of Open GL as its graphics API means that anyone who's ever written games for the PC will be intimately familiar with the set-up. In fact, PS3 employs a cut-down version named Open GL ES, which is even simpler - as Volatile's lead PS3 programmer, Lyndon Homewood explained:
"ES is designed for things like set-top boxes and mobile phones, where you want the fundamental graphics but don't need some of the fringe stuff that Open GL has. Because you've got that on PS3, it's going to be much easier than the PS2 to get something up and running - there are hundreds of books out there for it, so you can do your background reading. All the documentation is there."
We also got onto talking about how PS3 will deal with Cg - a version of the programming language C, which allows developers to code for advanced graphics processing units, specifically in the area of 3D shaders. (You can read more about Cg here and here). You may be completely up to spec on how this works, but Lyndon gives a decent beginners guide if not:
"Cg gives you a standard documented API for programming graphics chips. The main two segregations of Cg programming are the vertex shader and pixel shader. With the vertex shader you can act on 3D models at the vertex level, so for each triangle you can do something on each corner and then everything in-between is interpolated. So if you want to make your whole shape bigger, you can just push all the vertices out a bit. In this way you could, say, morph your character into a giant just by scaling up all the verts. It's a lot easier to get to that point in the graphics pipeline.â€
Read the full article [here].
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Comments
Cool.
Now, where's the price!
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Well thats one relief. Maybe games wont be as expensive as eveyone predicted. Im guessing games will still be around 60 dollars or the more familair 59.99.
Well lets hope that Sony does right and opens some hoembrew action on the psp because if its not too hard to develop for then maybe we will see some special features. maybe sony might open a homebrew submission section and make it availible for download on the PS3.
I cant wait to see the PS3. Im sure all the hype thats been generating wont bring it down. For all the hype for the PS2, it blew everyones expectations away. lets hope the same for the PS3.
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I hope your right vietone. I'm sure the ps3 will be a great system. I just want a date, price, and the ability to preorder.
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I just read more about it...and the dev was saying this,
"256k memory for each SPE"
Huh? That sounds like it IS going to be complicated to dev for. And if you read the article...he even goes into talking about how it IS difficult trying to make each SPE to hit timing PERFECTLY.
Sounds like he just said all the cons of developing for the ps3 with a smiley face.
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"All of this is already available and won't be a massive leap from what you're seeing on PCs with high-end graphics cards" The dev from possesion said. I thought the ps3 was supposed to be leaps and bounds compared to the PC?
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they're talking about the newness of the technologies:P
of course you've seen HDR in Farcry and Day of Defeat:Source, and etc. but with PS3, I am assuming it will be done with HD and with lesser lag.
and expecting "leaps and bounds compared to PC" is just fanboyism. it's like saying "but the ad said the burger is always better at BURGER KING!!!"
and you don't need perfect timing to make a game. as the article said, they will attempt to make a que based processing, which might prove to be a better solution than one SPE for Sound and etc.
Whether it is or not, it gave non-developing gamers like us the insight to at least whether it was extremely difficult as others thought.
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and xbox 360 was supposed to be "leaps and bounds" compared to pc, but as we all know..it's pretty much just as good as a bad ass rig (which i guess buck for buck is a savings...)
Also, quite possibly he was just saying that the development tools are builds off of what we curently have, and the end result will still be leaps and bounds, it's just built of off common and easy to use developing tools..
it seems that next gen consoles are just trying to make Your hdtv into a monitor for a computer...when really, if you think about it..that's what it's doing.
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Alright thanks Kura and Anon.
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Take that Xbox 360 fanboys!!
PS3 will be the number 1 next-gen system!
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are you mentaly handicaped?^^^
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No!
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well then your either joking or your a sony zealot.
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that doesn't matter does it?:D
You don't just walk around the street and scream out at christians that "ALLAH IS BETTER"
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People forget that there were complaints from no-name developers when the PS2 was launched yet there hasnt been a lack of games for that now has there? The kinds of developers that cant get around a system are the kinds of developers that create Army Men and other such games we dont actually want.
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This is just one developer say its not hard program for, right?
I wonder how much Sony gave Guerrilla to say 'Its easy to use'.
If Sony provide the same amount of support for the hardware as they did the ps2, dont expect any nice looking games for a long time. Last time round Sony basically gave the developers enough to compile some code and minimal documentation.
Microsoft have made it really nice for development, being you have a really nice ide coupled with having a full version of the directx library(which has tons of graphic features already builtin), plus the whole of the MSDN library(help and documentation)
.
While graphics programmers are neccesary on game development team, spending more time just to get a similar effect you could on another console with a few calls to a library is not always viable, that.
As has been said OPENGLES sucks, and it looks like they're trying to make the graphics programmers of dev teams in to graphic chip programmers.
They'll now have to also teach their programmers the perils of parallelization that are neccesary to know for even getting mediocre performance out of the cell cpu.
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in the article they do say that the support for the ps3 is far better. nvidia have some very comprehensive graphics tools for their cards, and have already said these are to be used on ps3... how is it that when even a developer says 'ps3 is not that hard to code for' some noobs out there think they know better?
why not believe them? i reckon it can only be good news, if you're a fan of xbox then it'll be lively battle, and if you're a fan of ps3 then it's good news regardless.
personally i want a little more information to come from people who know, all this speculation is getting annoying.
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why not believe them? i will tell you why. its because those are the same ass hole that showed us the FAKE killzone footage. also they even make it sound hard even though they just said the oposite. why should we believe them? they have never even made a good game. fyi, killzone sucked.
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anon 3:31pm
Killzone sucked because you didn't play it on the hardest setting, because you are a ****ing jackass that doesn't understand what a good video game is. It's people like you that allow the CRAP that is sports games to actually sell.
GO TO HELL
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Your wrong, Killzone sucked because Guerilla couldnt program a good game to save there life. And for the record, I DID play it on the hardest setting. I dont even play sports games and I DO know what a good game is and it certainly doesnt play or look anythink like killzone.
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anon 3:31pm
Killzone sucked because you didn't play it on the hardest setting, because you are a ****ing jackass that doesn't understand what a good video game is. It's people like you that allow the CRAP that is sports games to actually sell.
GO TO HELL"
Yea...killzone was a really bad game...did it even sell well? I'm not a big halo fan...but this wasn't...and won't be a halo killer.
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I have promise for the second one because I do believe the idea's and story were good but like I said they couldnt program a good game to save there lives.
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Are you serious? I am supposed to trust the Killzone Devs, who are owned by sony over Id software, who has actually made good games? not including Quake 4 which was made by Raven Software, this is just damage control from sony, if the system was so much easier to program for and didnt cost so much to develop for then why are all of these devs both western and eastern making games for the 360?
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